The election to the Constituent Assembly (CA) passed off relatively peacefully. Sporadic violence, including the killing of a couple of people and the capturing of about a dozen booths, should be taken in the normal course of things, given more than 22,000 polling booths spread across the country’s 240 constituencies. Even in the past, such incidents of violence had happened during every general election. Besides, this time around, the stakes are much higher, because the outcome will determine the composition of an assembly that will prepare the country’s constitution, and also of government and a new transitional legislature. By the time this newspaper hits the newsstands today, counting of votes will have commenced and initial results will have started coming out. The most important thing is that the Nepalis have succeeded in holding the CA election, putting all doubts to rest.

Though the full details of voter turnout were not available by the time these columns went to press yesterday, the Election Commission put it at over sixty per cent on average. This is encouraging given the state of security in the country till recently, with all kinds of speculations making rounds about poll-related violence. The problem of bogus votes, which has arisen during every election in Nepal, could have been minimised if the checking of identity papers of voters had been tightened. Many people are also reported to have put their thumb-impressions on the ballot papers for lack of voter education. But the immediate task is to look forward to the overall results, which, according to the Election Commission, will be tentatively clear within ten days after the counting has begun.

All the three major political parties have been claiming that they will come first, with a majority. This may be understandable, because conceding defeat even before the polls would have spelled political disaster for them. Therefore, it is not surprising that most people have not taken these claims too seriously. Besides, political pundits and various agencies have made their own estimates of the likely outcome. However, in the Nepali context, prediction has always been risky. And it has become much more so this time. Most vaunted surveys had gone wide of the mark even during past general elections. Moreover, since the last general election about nine years ago, several important factors have come into play – for instance, the decade-long Maoist insurgency and its implications, the Tarai agitation and emergence of several political parties in that region, the fundamental transformation of the country’s political and social agendas, the change in the monarchy’s status, the new voters accounting for more than one-third of the electoral rolls this time, and the increased consciousness of the people in general. Without knowing fairly accurately how these new factors will influence the outcome, any prediction is unlikely to come close to reality. Only past election data and personal bias appear to have dominated most current poll forecasts. The most reliable course of action would, therefore, be to keep oneself glued to election bulletins from today.